


verity

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Game(s), Resurrected Male Shepard, Reunions, Synthesis Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-05-16 13:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19319308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: But Shepard knows how to hope now. Not just for the galaxy or the Alliance or the Normandy or his friends. He knows how to hope for himself. He’s figured out how to hope for this.





	verity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [motherherbivore (Airheart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airheart/gifts).



|| Not Quite A Beginning, London, Five Days Post-Synthesis || 

Shepard turns his hand over and stares down at the smooth stretch of skin pulling across his knuckles and wonders at this body that contains none of his history. Except for the fact that it looks exactly like him, it might belong to anyone. It bears none of the marks his life left on him. And except for the slight shimmer of circuitry just barely visible, it might even be fully human. The loss steals his breath and he distracts himself by looking up: a bad idea. His eyes glint, a brighter green than before. The cybernetic scars are gone, too. Those were the price he gladly paid for doing what had to be done. He kind of misses them. They spoke to the truth of who he is.

The mirror is cracked and coated in dust, another casualty in the last battle of the Reaper War, victimized further when he slams his fist against its jagged surface. He should have known it would take a minute or two to adjust. Even just looking at his hand had jarred him.

It might take more than a minute to make peace with this.

The Catalyst had demanded a sacrifice and Shepard was willing to pay for it. Standing on that platform, his whole life reduced to one choice? He could deal with that. In fact, it felt pretty typical. Everyone around him gave him stupid choices. This or that. That or this. You want to do something else? Sorry, kid, the Council's got something to say about that. Or the Alliance or the Primarch or Clan Urdnot or the Dalatrass or even just his own team. He’s not sure now why he might have expected anything more in that moment than a few terrible options while the galaxy sat in the palm of his hands, but it was par for the course, really. What in his life hasn’t been just one more set of bad decisions to make after another?

This one, at least, guarantees life for the widest swath of people and ensures nobody can unilaterally decide that synthetics should be eradicated, that organics are a pox upon the natural universe, that anyone is lesser or better than anyone else. It’s not so easy to destroy people when they are no different than you in the ways that matters.

And he’s here now, more or less. Again. Back from the dead and uncertain about what that means. He’s not generally given to bouts of existential dread, but everyone has their breaking point and that breaking point sits inside of him and balloons outward, a leaden, impossible weight that just grows.

 _Your engrams were retained, Commander Shepard,_ he was told when he was first brought online, not twenty minutes ago, a disembodied voice speaking to him somehow and yet not at the exact same time. He thinks it was his own voice. _Your exact neurological patterning was protected at the culmination of your actions with the Catalyst. It was deemed important that you not—_

Shepard still isn’t sure why they’d hesitated. He’s still not sure what exactly they are. The remaining collective consciences of the galaxy maybe. Another AI. Whatever. It’s not Shepard’s job to care, even though he can’t stop himself from feeling scraped out inside, little more than the nervous impulses telling him that he shouldn’t get to be here this time. He hasn’t earned it. But he cares. He cares a lot. And he can’t help but think it won’t stick if he has a chance. The universe will crumble around him, cheated of a prize. He is not Orpheus, offered golden chances at bargain-basement prices. He makes the hard calls and follows through on them. He hears harder orders and follows through on those, too. He doesn’t get a do-over. Cheating is not allowed.

Except.

His hand shifts, glinting, a soothing green sheen under the lights, beautiful in a way, though incomplete. No mark bisects his palm where he’d cut into the meat of it while cooking dinner for Steve. Shore leave, it was, back on the Citadel. He’d given everyone an extra day off just so he could sneak a few extra hours with the man he’d grown to love. It had shone red, just a bit. Cerberus’s cybernetics extended everywhere, he’d learned, more than a little impressed and terrified by how thoroughly inhuman they’d made him. Steve hadn’t understood why Shepard wouldn’t put medigel on it. “It’ll scar,” he’d said, concerned, and Shepard had just replied, “Just this once I’d like my body to reflect the good times and not just the bad. Let it scar.”

That had shut Steve up. Mostly. A blush stained his cheeks that might have been because of the beer or might just have been because of Shepard. Steve did tell Shepard he was going to break up with him if he bled all over the onions. That might’ve been the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to him.

He wishes he still had that scar, might like to see what it would look like if it shone in shades of green instead of red. Would circuits curl from the edges in glimmering shades of silver? He doesn’t know and he can’t bring to recreate the scar; it wouldn’t carry the same meaning. But somehow, he knows it’s possible, that he could think it back into existence. The same with the scars that curved across his jaw. But he doesn’t like those ones quite as much. Doesn’t want to wish them back onto his face.

He has his memories and that should be enough.

They are enough; they have to be.

|| Before The End, London, One Hour Prior To Synthesis || 

He tells Steve he’ll come back in one piece, but he knows he won’t, knows it in the same way he knew all along that they’d win this war and he wouldn’t survive to see the day after it was over.

He’ll never forgive himself for the flip answer, out before he’s fully thought it through, little better than nonsense syllables. He’s so used to projecting confidence to everyone in his path. It just happens.

Steve deserves better. Shouldn’t face a repeat of Robert, except worse. At least Robert hadn’t lied to him in the end. When Steve replays this recording, terse words, not even a proper goodbye, will he resent Shepard for his thoughtlessness in these final moments? Or will he be grateful for a few more minutes of hope, one last inspirational gift from the incomparable Commander Shepard?

He doesn’t tell Steve this, there’s not time, won’t tell anyone ever that he made this one selfish promise to himself, but now that he’s spoken it into existence, he’ll be damned if he doesn’t find a way home. Whatever the cost.

If it costs him the universe, he’ll do it.

|| A Fresh Start, The Citadel, Eight-Hundred and Fifty-Six Days, Thirty Minutes, Twenty-One Seconds Post-Synthesis || 

He’s in one piece anyway, that’s what he tells himself. Whether it’s a piece Steve will still want is another question entirely. He is no longer flesh and blood and bone, marrow and sinew and pure-human grit. That’s true of everyone, of course; Shepard took a minute to confirm as much with the shattered, shaken newsfeeds before he called up Hackett the first time. But he’s just a little bit less than the rest of them. His flesh could fool anybody by touch or taste or look. His blood, an analyzer. His bones, radiological tests, if need be. But Shepard knows the truth.

They are not his. They have been manufactured for him.

And he has no idea what that will mean to Steve.

It took over a year on Earth for long-range communications to come back up and he knows, thanks to Alliance HQ, that the first message beamed across space concerns Shepard’s survival. It’ll take years for that message to reach the Citadel. They might all be dead and gone before it arrives, but humans are nothing if not impatient to do something, even make pointless gestures to a galaxy that will one day mock this moment in history books. Imagine one man thinking he’s so important that his name is the first one beamed across interstellar space after synthesis?

It took another five months to retrofit and repair a ship capable of getting Shepard to the Citadel and it’ll end up beating that message by… a significant time frame, though not as quickly as a quick jaunt to Arcturus would’ve been. There’s scuttlebutt that the Mass Relay system is already partially operational a little further afield, and that’s the goal. Scientists have kept their eyes peeled, telescopes searching the skies, for signs that civilization is rebuilding itself. It might possibly be more worthwhile to remain a while longer, let the cavalry come to him, but he’s not sure he’ll be able to face Steve if he hasn’t done everything within his own power to return to him. There’s plenty he can do on Earth, but it’s not where he needs to be.

Anyway, it’s not so bad being stuck on a tin can for a few years.

He learns, twenty-two seconds after getting within easy comms range of the Citadel, that the _Normandy_ is in dry dock, having limped back to civilization through sheer determination some months ago. If Shepard was more of a coward, he’d stay here and filter through every last report he can find, abuse his Spectre status for more, alert the galaxy to his presence in the most ridiculous way possible: by not alerting them at all, by letting the Citadel Docking Authority relay the news.

Instead, he calls Sparatus and tells him he wants a private hangar, no press, and, “for the love of everything that is good in the universe, you will ensure that Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani remains as far away from me as humanly possible,” since he’s sure she’s floating around somewhere, probably pleased that she and her camera can be as one if they want to be. “Cat’s out of the bag, but I want five minutes to get my bearings.” It occurs to him as he begins disembarkation procedures, that he could call Steve if he wants to. The laws of the universe can no longer fight him on this score. Steve is within reach if Shepard wants him to be.

“Make sure Steve Cortez knows, but don’t suggest I’ve demanded his presence.”

Sparatus agrees with less argument than usual. Which just goes to show what being the biggest hero in the galaxy can get you. He’ll have to remember this the next time the council wants to fight with him about something. All he’s got to do is die a couple of times and destroy a bunch of Reapers for a little respect.

“What happened to my team?” he asks before Sparatus can cut the comm. “And not the newsfeed version.”

Sparatus is readier with the answer than Shepard had expected, a terse, “They survived, Shepard. The adjustment’s killing everybody, but they lived, and that’s the important thing, isn’t it? Give us fifteen to get the hangar prepped. And you owe me one for covering for you.”

He’s incandescently relieved to learn that everyone he left behind survived, takes a whole minute to regain his bearings as the pilot guides their shuttle into the private hangar Sparatus has arranged. The trip is smoother than any he’s ever been on, even smoother than Steve’s piloting, and Shepard can’t help but wonder if the relationship between pilots and their ships has changed now. Everything feels different and new and familiar all at the same time. Shepard can press his hand to the metal hull of the ship and feel things he’s never felt before, a deep sympathy with the inorganic components that form the shuttle and not just that it’s cold and hard to the touch.

“We’re locked in, sir,” the pilot says from up front, turning to look at Shepard. “You’re free to disembark if you’d like. The way is clear.” Her eyes are green, too, almost unfathomably so, though Shepard could easily run a spectral analysis on the color if he wanted to. It’s entirely fathomable from a physiological standpoint.

“Thank you,” he replies, restraining himself as he strolls toward the descending ramp when all he wants to do is throw himself down it.

Even his dreams of what this moment would be like have taken on a hazy quality. He stopped eventually, driving himself insane with what it could and should and would be, and forbade himself from thinking about it at all. There’s only so much he’s willing to confront before he realizes he’s just being masochistic. He hit that point somewhere around the first anniversary of being stuck on Earth and hasn’t looked back until now.

Maybe he should have known what he’d find: his friends, the closest thing he’s ever had to family in this whole damned galaxy. So many faces he can’t count them at first. But there’s no press somehow, just as promised. Miraculously. Even Sparatus is there, arms crossed, his head turned toward the door so he can pretend he isn’t involved.

Shepard’s heart stops when he sees Steve.

 _I came back,_ he thinks, throwing caution to the wind. He’s always protected his heart as best he can—it’s what all soldiers have to do, or at least what he’s always done, Steve’s the same way, it’s how you survive hell—but what’s there to worry about now? He’s died already, twice, and the Reapers are gone, dead the way you can’t come back from. There’s nothing left from which Shepard _needs_ to protect himself. So he doesn’t. He embraces the ache, the sudden, rapid rhythm as his heartbeat kicks back into gear. _I shouldn’t have, but I did._

And maybe it should be wrong—he keeps his approach slow, just in case, he remembers the complicated way his friends felt about him when he came back the first time; he doesn’t want to scare Steve, doesn’t want to revile him—but he doesn’t care. He’s had a lot of time to fear whether he was truly here, if he’s the Shepard who should have died or a simulacrum and he just. Doesn’t. Care. If Steve will accept him, embrace him, at least not turn away from him, it doesn’t matter what he is.

He’ll prove, every day of his life, that he’s still Shepard if he has to. In all the ways that matter, he’s still himself.

A flurry of emotions cross Steve’s face, rapid-fire and hard to parse. Steve’s never been big on emoting. His feelings live in the sound of his voice. Until he speaks, Shepard can’t be sure what he’s in for, but that’s okay. He’ll wait until the end of the universe if he has to. They’ve got time now. As much of it as they want.

Steve’s sucked-in breath shakes and wavers and then he lets loose a wavering laugh and pushes past Garrus, clasping him on his armored shoulder as he passes. The plates above Garrus’s eyes lift and his attention lingers on Shepard’s face and he mouths something that might be _you crazy son of a bitch_. The only reason Shepard knows it is because he recognizes that particular flare of the Garrus’s mandible and not because he can suddenly read turian lips. He’s heard more than his fair share of turians call him a crazy son of a bitch after all.

“You bastard,” Steve calls, the lights glinting off the delicately curving circuits in his cheeks. Steve’s hands pull him into a strong, desperate hug, his fingers seeming almost to threaten the integrity of his jacket, the fabric straining as Steve’s fists tighten in it. His cheek rests against Shepard’s jaw as he rests his chin against Shepard’s shoulder, lips finding the spot on Shepard’s neck that drives him absolutely nuts. But he doesn’t kiss Shepard—now who’s the bastard—and instead speaks into Shepard’s skin, a secret shared between them. Nobody around them can hear them. They might as well be alone. “I didn’t really think—”

Shepard’s arms snake around Steve’s waist, settle against the thick, powerful muscles at the small of his back. Moment of truth. “I was lying when I said I would,” he admits. There hadn’t been a doubt in his mind by that point that he wouldn’t, no matter how hard he fought. London was too big of a fight and he knew in his marrow, deeper than that even, that it would require a sacrifice. “I’m so sorry, Steve.” He’s lucky, he realizes, that he lived long enough to rectify this. If Steve will let him. If Steve _can_ let him. His fingers clench in Steve’s shirt, almost pulls it from the neat, perfect tuck from inside Steve’s pants. “I didn’t know what else to say and I wasn’t coming back until I decided I had to. Just so it wouldn’t be a lie anymore.”

He’d thought Robert an admirable, courageous man before, but having come out the other side of the same exact situation, somehow miraculously alive by whatever definition can be granted to account for him, he knows how hard it must have been not to try consoling Steve instead, offer him just a few more moments of peace instead of the cold, unflinching truth. Even Shepard couldn’t manage that kind of bravery.

Steve huffs wetly, a miserable, self-deprecating little laugh, and sniffs suspiciously. “It’s okay,” he says, though his tone is so muddled and confused that Shepard knows it can’t possibly be okay. They won’t be able to pick up where they left off, not exactly, but.

But Shepard knows how to hope now. Not just for the galaxy or the Alliance or the Normandy or his friends. He knows how to hope for himself. He’s figured out how to hope for this.

He grabs Steve by the shoulder and pushes him back a little, just so Shepard can get a look at him. His hands are as calloused as ever in all the familiar places, dry across the knuckles, bruised and pinched in the little web of skin between his thumbs and index fingers. The sheen of new skin mars the back of his hand where he’s had a recent burn, freshly dressed with medigel. There’s no ring, not even the shadow of one.

Shepard lets out a relieved breath. Steve’s the settling down type, deep in his heart of hearts. If he’s met someone else, a serious someone…

Of course, Steve catches him at it immediately and offers a crooked smile. “You can ask, Commander,” he says. “Though the answer may not be as flattering as you might think.”

And Shepard’s relieved, too, at what Steve hasn’t said. Shepard showed him how to move on; Steve said it himself. It would be the height of egoism to think Shepard hadn’t also been showing him how to move on from Shepard if the time ever came. When it came. Since it did come. As much as Shepard hadn’t wanted it to. He’s glad that he hasn’t shattered Steve irreparably, that he wasn’t entirely alone this whole time, but there’s no one now or he’d have answered straight. “Let me guess,” he replies, digging up the grave-dry humor that sees everyone through their darkest days, “you’ve been busy cleaning up all my messes and never once had a moment to yourself.”

“You do leave behind some big messes.” Steve watches Shepard like he’s waiting for something from Shepard, a key, a word, a reason. Shepard’s scrabbling for an answer when Steve continues. “But you left behind a lot of reliable people, too. They’ve seen it through.” The corner of Steve’s mouth lifts and he smiles again, inviting, comforting, welcoming, not at all teasing. Entirely serious in his intent though he keeps it light. His eyes search Shepard’s face. “I’m sure they’re all very happy you’re back now.”

Steve doesn’t ask the obvious questions: how, why, what are you. Maybe he knows Shepard has no answers and just doesn’t care. If Shepard’s an artificial intelligence and this body is just so much lifeless silicon and carbon, well, who is any different these days? He’s moving around. He’s aware. That’s all he needs.

“If I were to ask one of them to have dinner with me,” Shepard asks in turn, an easier question to answer, maybe, “what do you think he’d say?”

The corner of Steve’s eyes crinkle, easing the ache in Shepard’s chest. Even if Steve says nothing now, they have a chance. Shepard can make it up to him, whatever else he does. It might not be easy, but it will be worthwhile.

“If you’re doing the cooking, he’d say you have a good chance of hearing a yes out of him.” A wider smile now, one that makes Shepard’s heart skip a beat or two. “He might have missed your filet mignon.”

Shepard smiles back and nods and knows he doesn’t have to say anything else, that his apology’s been accepted.

The filet mignon was always a given.


End file.
